Author name: amy

Good morning ladies.  Hope your having a great start to your morning.  Mine is starting early.  It is only 5 am today but I am up and ready to go.  I am not sure for what yet, but at least I am off and running with coffee next to me.

We had a busy last couple of days.  After doing all of those chocolates, I still had some baking to do.  I don’t know if anyone else has issues with altitude baking, but I do. I have not made too many drop cookies since moving to the mountains.  I normally do bar cookies, just out of them being easy.  But since I am hosting a cookie exchange this week, I needed to bake some cookies.  My choice of cookies are soft and chewy molasses cookies.   I made multiple batches and then put them in the refrigerator overnight.  I woke up eager to start my baking and did a couple of pans.  They were flat.  I turned down my temperature and added more flour, and that seemed to help.  But this was after multiple wasting of pans.  My chickens and dog sure enjoyed them! Aghhhh?!?!?  I don’t like wasting and that to me was a lot of wasting.  Oh well, live and learn.  I was going to do chocolate chip cookies but decided to just make the bar kind.  So much easier.

Then, the rain had cleared away from earlier in the week and it was turning into a beautiful day.  I decided on taking my crew to the Dupont Forest.  There are a couple of hiking trails that you can go see some  huge waterfalls.  I don’t have any pictures, because I didn’t take many.  I know, complete fail.  It was nice.  We were able to just wear gloves and sweat shirts.  Love that kind of weather.  Then Lauren met us with her children that she nannies and we decided on going to the park to play for a little bit.  We stayed for about an hour and then came home.  I pulled out the pita bread, spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, pepperoni, ham, bacon bits, onions, pineapple, mushrooms, and cheeses.  Everyone made their own personal pizzas for dinner.

We did baths because we had not done it the day before and cleaned up the house. My brother hung me some more Christmas lights outside.  Evan did a bunch around the decks and then we wanted to do a giant cross on the front of the house. I remember driving through the mountains in the winter and thinking, “If I had a house way up, I would put some really neat Christmas lights for everyone to see while driving through them.”  Now I get that chance:)   Next year we can do some more, but I will first have to get some lights after Christmas on clearance—they are expensive.  He did a great job, it looks really neat from the interstate.

Thursday was a get back into routine day.  We had been doing school all week and just needed to finish up a couple of things so we did that.  Cleaned the house and did laundry.  Lauren took the girls to a quilting class that made holiday stockings.  They had fun.

At our ladies meeting on Tuesday, Sybil made some cheesy sausage soup.    It was so good.  I knew that I needed to make it.  For last nights dinner I made it easy and did chicken strips and fries for the children.  I had the ingredients for the soup, so I made some and it was so yummy.  I am glad that I will have some for lunch today.

I finished my night with the heat turned up!  We have some kind of cold, Arctic blast coming through the mountains.  I made some things up for my cookie exchange on Saturday and tucked the children into bed earlier.  Today will be a day of running some errands after we get school and house work done.

I was asked for my cleaning schedule.  Posting it here . I have gotten much simpler over the years.  I can look back and see my Managing a large family series and all the detailed work I would have to do in planning out how to clean my home.  I guess it was because I had so many little ones and they needed more guidance, or maybe I have gotten simpler over the years.  Whatever the reason, this is what I use now.  I put it on my refrigerator and it is one of the first things I look at each day.  I know what I have to do for each day and it helps not to “stress” me out when I see fingerprints on the windows, because I know that I will get to them eventually during the  week.  I mean it helps so much more now that my children are older and can pick up their toys.  It seemed that the house always had some sort of mess going on, but now I can remind the child who left out their shoes, ear buds, book, tablet, toys, etc and they get them.   Except for those legos!?!!  We ALWAYS find legos:)  My boys love them!

I pray you have a good day today.  Smile, even when you don’t feel like smiling.  Gather up some ingredients and bake some cookies with your babies.  I know, it means more mess, but do it this one time and make it part of your holiday traditions.  I love you ladies and will talk to you next week!

Good morning ladies.  Okay I have to admit, yesterday was rough.  I was so tired from all of the running that we had done over the weekend that I was beat.  But in the morning, after my time with the Lord, I knew it was going to be a good day.  It was a busy day, but one that I didn’t feel drained as I had felt from the weekend.

We had gotten up and Monday is my clean my floors day.  I sweep and hand wash my floors upstairs and down.  This allows me to get under the couch and into all of those corners and cracks where dust bunnies live.  We do a good vacuum and this forces a pick up to put things away from the weekend.  That got done early.  Then we pulled out school and got some done.  Yes, we could have just not done any but it didn’t take any time away from our visiting and the children got it done quickly and now we won’t be behind this year!

We then started doing our chocolates for the holidays.

Up first is my personal favorite.  At Starbucks one day I bought this tiny bag of dark chocolate, coconut, and sea salted almonds.  It was so good.  But for $4 a bag–just a treat.  So I decided to recreate my own and I can tell you that this is my GOTO for chocolate fixes.  I keep them in my freezer and pull one out when I want one.  I purposely put the cranberries in them to keep “others” from eating it:) 

I have no name so I call them chocolate, coconut, pretzel,almond, cranberry candy.  So original:)

We made biscotti.  I am hooked on this stuff.  Tammy made it last year and it is now part of my traditional cookies.  

I tried a chocolate one with cake mix, just to spice it up a bit.  The homemade chocolate version is just as good as this cake mix one.

We also did some peanut butter M&M chocolate covered balls.  I think they are called Buckeyes, depending upon where you live.  Another staple treat for us each year.

We did this for an easy popcorn treat.  Pop some popcorn and melt chocolate and we did caramel apple discs as well, drizzle on top.  We added candy corns.  Good treat–more fall like, but we had to use up the ingredients:)

Then, thank goodness for Twitter life hacks!!! I found this great idea for doing chocolate covered pretzels.  You put the melting chocolate in jars and place them in a crockpot with some water.  Hello???  Genius!!! 

BUT, we didn’t do an entire jar of chocolate so we had to tip them on their sides to get the chocolate out.  Still WAY neater than using a bowl.  If I had some maybe Starbucks glass coffee jars I might save those for next year to do it, but this worked.  Clean up was easy as well.  We did peanut butter chips, dark chocolate, light chocolate, and white.

We then put them on Freezer paper and sprinkled some toppings.

Then I think I found the easiest way.  We had some chocolate in a plastic bag for doing molds, I just put the pretzel in the bag and coated it that way.  To me that was easiest.  You can wipe it off easier too.  I’m sure someone did a Life hack for that!

We had a “special” tray for the little ones because their chocolate involved licking the sprinkles.  Chocolate, sprinkles, and children!!!  A good combination?!?!?

Jadyn did some candy molds, we just squeezed them in from a plastic bag.  She had fun. I would like to get her more molds to do this for other times as well.

My friend Marie gave us some peanut brittle last year and it was sooooooo good. I asked her for the recipe and I am so glad I made it.  It takes patience to sit and stir it for the 20 minutes or so that you are at the stove, but it is good.        

We then ended the day with Jentzen losing his first tooth. He was so excited!  He attributes a lost tooth to Dad taking him to the store.  Dad is such a softie:)  It is good.

Then my night consisted of hand washing the floor again due to sprinkles.  But I am finished with sprinkles for now.  Then we watched Mom’s Night Out and Parental Guidance, two of my favorite movies.  I had to hand paint some letters for Greg’s business so that was a good thing to watch while we did that.  I packaged up some orders to ship today and called it a night.  I woke up today feeling much better and ready for my day.  I already started doing my Tuesday chores which consist of deep cleaning all the bathrooms.  I got one down, two more to go.  I love separating my chores, because I know I will eventually get to everything in a week’s time instead of worrying about getting them done in one day.

I pray you have a wonderful day today.  Get out an easy recipe or try one of these to do with your children. I know mess is not my favorite either, but the children remember doing this every year and it is all about making memories.  You won’t remember hand washing the floors trying to get every sprinkle that you find, but you will remember making cookies with your babies.  Enjoy and see you tomorrow!